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Online video watching to double by 2015, Cisco forecasts

June 1, 2011 | 11:31
am

The number of people watching video on the Internet is expected to nearly double by 2015 to 1.5 billion while the amount of video they watch on the Web is also seen doubling to more than an hour a day, according to a forecast released on Wednesday by Cisco Systems.

In the company's Visual Networking Index, which is released annually and forecasts Internet usage over the next five years, Cisco predicts the amount of total Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, with video streaming a major factor behind the growth.

Netflix's video streaming already accounts for more Internet traffic than anything else on the Web, making up nearly a quarter of all Internet traffic, according to a recent report by Sandvine Inc., a networking equipment company.

Arielle Sumits, a senior analyst for Cisco, said one of the biggest factors behind the expected exponential growth of Internet traffic is the migration of viewers from broadcast TV to Internet video.

Individual Internet usage is also expected to more than triple to nearly 25 gigabytes a month for an average user in 2015 from 7 gigabytes. That would be like watching six HD movies, 30 TV episodes and a 3-D move a month, compared to the average user today who could watch three HD movies and five TV shows.

Cisco, which makes networking devices and systems, stands to gain from the kind of increase in Internet usage it is projecting.